Document Details

Review
"A well-researched and lucidly written book, [it]will take its place in the long line of historical studies that illuminate our path and help us to clarify our identities."--Selwyn R. Cudjoe, 'Trinidad Guardian' "'Indentured Labor, Caribbean Sugar' makes a new and significant contribution to the literature on Caribbean social and labor history. It is also an important contribution to the new field of Asian-American Studies, which is payingincreasing attention to the Asian Diaspora and to Asian immigration history and communities outside the United States. Along with historians, sociologists and anthropologists will certainly find this work interesting and useful."--Evelyn Hu-DeHart, University of Colorado at Boulder.

Product Description
This work provides a study of Asian immigration and the indenture system in the British West Indies - with particular emphasis on the experiences of indentured labourers in the major receiving colonies of British Guyana, Trinidad and Jamaica. Exploring living and working conditions, as well as the make-up of immigrant communities and their cultures, Look Lai offers a "dialectical pluralist" model of Caribbean acculturation that contrasts with the more familiar "melting pot" or "pure pluralist" models. He addresses a variety of social and economic factors, such as: the forms of labour other than indenture; the ethnic and racial make-up of the colonial population; and the connection between agricultural and commercial development. He also examines the immediate post-indenture period in order to follow the relationship of former "coolies" to the plantation system and to agriculture in general.